7/09/2011

Crackerjack (1994)

It’s Die Hard (1988) in a hotel! Following in the tradition of “It’s Die Hard in a ______________” (you fill in the blank) movies, Crackerjack has been said to be something of a cross between Die Hard and Cliffhanger (1993), but really it’s much closer to the John McClane side of things. Thomas Ian Griffith stars as the awesomely-named Jack Wild,
a Chicago Cop On The Edge. Does this seem at all familiar yet? His
concerned family believes that he is too on the edge for his own good,
so his brother Mike Wild (Sali), and his wife and baby all go to the rocky mountains. Why they thought that was a good location remains unknown.

While
at a remote mountain hotel, a sinister plot to steal millions of
dollars worth of diamonds is spearheaded by the nefarious Ivan Getz
(Plummer) and his band of vaguely-European goons. Then they’re going to
cause an avalanche
to destroy the hotel, again with no rational explanation. Will the
unmitigated power of Jack Wild stop the baddies, and romance “Activities
Director” K.C. (Kinski) along the way? Just you wait and see!

Actually
this movie is not bad at all. It’s professionally made, entertaining,
and is able to propel itself along on cliche-power alone. It’s one of
the better T.I.G movies we’ve seen to date. He has a great entrance and
the movie suffers when he’s not onscreen. T.I.G. is able to win over the
audience with his charm, not to mention his fighting ability, and he
carries the movie well. You genuinely like Jack Wild. When the classic
90’s baddies are holding the hotel guests hostage and shooting a lot of
people and blowing things up, you root for Wild. You can’t ask for more
in a movie like this. You’d be surprised how often filmmakers fail at
this formula. Luckily, that did not happen here.

As far as Christopher Plummer
is
concerned, the only question you’ll have is, “why?” How did they get an
actor of his caliber to appear in this type of product? I guess it
wouldn’t be the first time, as he was in an AIP movie (Firehead, 1991), so
this is gold in comparison. An actor’s gotta eat, and they probably told
him this was his chance to outdo Alan Rickman,
so he went for it. His acting style here seems to be “whisper a lot to
seem intense and wear various types of eyewear”. We also felt Robert
Davi could have played this role.

Oddly, there are not one, but
two Crackerjack sequels, with different actors as different characters
in the lead role. Was this movie that successful? We had no idea it made
enough money to spawn sequels. But such is life, and at least this
first (and only “true” Crackerjack movie for the fans...just kidding)
has plenty of entertaining violence to pass the time. That being said, things ramped up considerably when Crackerjack 2 came on the scene.

Shot in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Crackerjack
might be one of the more watchable Die Hard knockoffs around.

20 comments:

I vaguely remember this one, but it looks like fun so I'll have to check it out again. Great stuff. And love the Christopher Plummer. In the same week you're doing a movie with him, and I'm doing on with his The Last Station co-star Helen Mirren, for which both were nominated for Oscars. Funny how that kind of thing works, huh?

Yeah, this film was a blast all the way through, Plummer's actually been in quite a few DTV films, but he's always fun to watch. Crackerjack 3, despite having the great Bo Svenson nad Olivier Gruner, was a pretty meh film. Haven't seen the first sequel(which is called Hostage Train in the US BTW) but I definitely will ASAP as it has Judge Reinhold and Carol Alt.

Out of all the classic scenes in this great film (now on Netflix) the best is when he punches his brother in the face for throwing him a surprise birthday party. Nothing defines a burned out cop more than that totally unreasonable assault.